Can you point me at earlier conversations? I'd love to see what the HN hive-mind has to contribute to this. I've only found one previous submission[0], and that has no discussion.
Thanks for the link to search, but I've already done that, and you serve to confirm my point. Unless I'm mistaken, that search shows lots of items about HyperLogLog, but exactly one previous submission of this specific subject wherein the facilities of HLL are extended to include intersections. And that item has no discussion.
This submission is not about HyperLogLog - it's about an extension that has more capability. When Harimwakairi said:
> I love that every month or two
> someone who missed it the first
> time rediscovers this article,
> has the "holy crap!" moment,
> and posts it to HN. :)
... they were, quite simply, wrong. More, that comment may have served to make people say "Oh, I've seen that before" and ignore this one.
> But I take exception to hive-mind;
> this place really isn't.
I guess this is a case of terms carrying different baggage in different places. In my circles the implication is more that of "collective intelligence" rather than "group-think". I intended the former - it's a compliment.